TotalEnergies, Chevron Call for Faster Permits and Improved Seismic Data to Unlock Africa’s Oil and Gas Potential
Africa’s oil and gas industry could be on the verge of a new exploration boom, driven by advanced seismic imaging, frontier datasets, and faster permitting processes, according to industry leaders at Africa Energy Week (AEW): Invest in African Energies 2025 in Cape Town.
Emmanuelle Garinet, VP of Exploration Africa at TotalEnergies, highlighted the potential of Africa’s frontier basins, citing Namibia’s Venus well as an example. “When we decided to drill the Venus well, it was frontier, but we had a probability of success of more than 50% because of the seismic data and direct hydrocarbon indicators,” she said.
Garinet noted that exploration permitting in the Republic of Congo is moving rapidly, with TotalEnergies securing a permit in under six months, in contrast to South Africa where legal challenges have delayed approvals. “This is unacceptable given limited budgets for global exploration,” she added.
Chevron CEO Gavin Lewis emphasised the importance of comprehensive subsurface datasets. “Before you can do any AI-driven workflows, you need a dataset that illuminates what the subsurface looks like,” he said, noting Africa’s limited capacity to sponsor multi-client datasets compared with regions such as the Gulf of America.
Bryan Ritchie, VP of Exploration for bp, highlighted Egypt’s Nile Delta, where bp completed the first deepwater ocean-bottom node seismic survey over the Atoll field. He said the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company plans to expand multi-client data coverage across the delta, opening new opportunities.
Terry Gebhardt, VP of Exploration at Woodside Energy, stressed that geoscience and subsurface data are crucial not only for exploration but also for carbon capture projects and optimising recovery from existing fields.
The panel discussion, sponsored by EnerGeo Alliance, also noted strong investment prospects for Africa’s oil and gas sector. Nikki Martin, President and CEO of EnerGeo Alliance, said capital expenditure is expected to reach $54 billion by 2030, following a $6 billion surge in exploration spending in 2024.
